Dell Rapids is home to several authors who have written books on a variety of subjects.

One would think to be an author one has to simply write a book or maybe an article. Sounds easy, but in the end it is far more difficult than one would think.

Some say the history of Dell Rapids can be very boring; names, dates and locations. But what if you lived that life, the names in your book were relatives and friends, the dates were personal and the locations were places you visited often. Places you shopped, worked and played.

What a better way to get to know the history of Dell Rapids than to read a book about Dell Rapids, from the perspective of a young woman who spent most of her young life growing up here.

Prairie Girl written by Lucile Fargo is a wonderful, rambunctious book about a young girl’s adventures on the prairie, growing up in a small town known as “Rocky Run,” a.k.a. Dell Rapids.

Fargo came here from Lake Mills, Wisc. with her parents. Originally they homesteaded near Mitchell and it was there she was called “Prairie girl.” Later they would move to Dell Rapids where she lived for many years in a home constructed by her father from the remains of an old church destroyed by a tornado.

Fargo is often compared to another famous regional author, Laura Ingalls Wilder. And yet they are so very different. Both write of the time period set in the 1880s. Wilder wrote of baking pies with ma, helping pa with some of the farm chores and everything a young lady of that time period should be. Fargo wanted more.

She wrote of adventures on the cliffs of the Dells, helping her father at the hardware store, saving children during a blizzard and wanting to build homes fit for living and not just looks. The spirit within her was barely containable. At one time she even rode a bicycle 30 miles to Madison - a great feat for a woman of her time.
Prairie Girl becomes subsequently vibrant for the readers due to the fact that many of the places, scenes and structures she writes about in her books still remain much as they did when she originally wrote about them.

Fargo had an appreciation for a woman’s intense desire to keep up with the world even though the prairie frontier isolated Dell Rapids from the rest of the nation.

Later she would become a teacher, then a librarian, all the while writing books about her profession, for which she became very notable within her circles. Her last position before retirement was as associate professor in the School of Library Science at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. She was an honorary member of the American Library Association. Retiring to Berkeley, Calif. where she wrote her last book Spokane Story.

Fargo died at the age of 81 on July 5, 1962, in Santa Clara, Calif. after a lingering illness.

Thankfully, through Prairie Girl, Fargo gives the world a glimpse of Dell Rapids as only one who has lived here can truly appreciate.